timberwraith

timberwraith, 11 months ago to random

I see a bit of discourse going around at the moment reminding people that it was possible in the middle of the last century for a person to support a family, own a house, etc. on a singe wage earner's income via many different kinds of working class occupations.

I want to remind people that this was true primarily for WHITE working class families. The virulent racism which has infected the u.s. since its inception often excluded POC from access to those well paying jobs.

timberwraith, 4 months ago to random

I never felt compelled by the press's obsession with encouraging Dem/liberal voters to understand Trump voters.

I come from a family of Trump voters and a hometown full of right leaning white working class people: the "salt of the earth" types white reporters love so much.

I already know them. They're alienated by anyone outside of their white conservative enclaves and they dream of an idealized past where the people they currently fear were repressed, threatened, and silenced by society.

timberwraith, 12 days ago to random

Hoping for a Mad Max movie where they run out of fuel and vehicles and they're forced to chase each other on bicycles.

timberwraith, 4 months ago to random

I'm going to point out that the administrator of a Fediverse instance (Serge at babka.social) recently boosted a thread that encourages Democrats to believe that FBI investigations of anti-war/pro-Palestinian organizations are valid and needed.

Do I need to point out the messed up nature of promoting FBI investigations of anti-war, anti-oppression organizations? This is a promotion of COINTELPRO like actions by the u.s. government.

Personally? I blocked this guy.

timberwraith, 30 days ago to random

Jack Dorsey left Bluesky because they want some way of moderating awful posts and he is opposed to that. He thought Twitter banning Trump was a terrible idea.

He said he has always liked how Musk uses Twitter and seems to agree with the general direction Musk has taken Twitter in.

He wants to monetize social media with Bitcoin transactions.

Jack Dorsey is a libertarian, nazi piece of garbage who doesn't care if he burns the planet up with Bitcoin profiteering.

https://mas.to/@kissane/112413009263744330

timberwraith, 1 month ago to random

The Nation just published an in-depth investigation into the horrible work culture that is permitted, even encouraged, at Tesla factories.

The levels of sexual and racial harassment are horrific, while white males are favored in pay and promotions above others, baring many from advancement. The work conditions are exceedingly unsafe.

This kind of work environment is supported by the unhinged bigotry of the person at the very top of management: Elon Musk.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/tesla-racism-sexual-harassment/

timberwraith, 3 months ago to random

"Bullying is a normal part of growing up."

Is the same as saying:

1. It's normal for my child to assault others when they don't like someone.

2. It's normal for schools be a place where beatings and emotional abuse take place.

3. Being beaten and traumatized is a normal learning experience for children, both for the child who assaults others and for the children being assaulted.

4. There is something wrong with a child who doesn't prosper under conditions of emotional and physical abuse.

timberwraith, 2 months ago to random

Anyone who is still at X/Twitter is doing their own tiny little contribution toward supporting this bigot.

I don't care what your excuses are. You're supporting this by being there.

You have alternatives. Move. If you actually give a shit about harming other people.

If you don't care, if supporting a bigoted monster doesn't matter to you, well, I guess you'll stay.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/04/elon-musk-will-sue-australia-for-ordering-x-to-remove-a-hateful-post-by-an-anti-trans-activist/

timberwraith, 1 year ago to random

🧵 A scary, real summary of where u.s. state politics is currently at, in regard to trans issues and the state persecution of trans people and their families by @e_urq:

https://journa.host/@e_urq/110397365699678226

timberwraith, 2 months ago to random

This is what I have to say about school bullying and suicide.

If the children of the dominant demographics of a community had children who were being bullied by the marginalized students of the community, to the point of suicide, there would be immediate, unrelenting action taken.

In fact, it would likely be a brutally violent retribution, with legislators, courts, police, and the criminal justice system bearing down HARD on the marginalized communities whose children played a part.

timberwraith, 5 months ago to random

Maybe don't call people "white"?

Maybe don't call people "straight"?

Maybe don't call people "christian"?

Maybe don't call people "men"?

Maybe don't call people [by a label which designates membership in a more powerful, dominant group whose lives are treated as the baseline "norm" and who happen to have far greater power to impose and enforce oppressive social norms in a heavily socially stratified society]?

timberwraith, 3 months ago to random

Given the number of supposed leftists who wandered off to the alt-right and various other versions of fascism in recent years, I don't think there's a single part of the political spectrum from liberal to far left that doesn't have people who will wind up wearing a brown shirt tomorrow.

If you piss off a subset of white/cis/het/etc. people from liberal to left hard enough by confronting obnoxious, privileged behaviors, some will wind up singing nazi show tunes a little further down the road.

timberwraith, 3 months ago to random

I'm not sure how someone can actually form a loving bond with another animal (a cat or dog or someone else) and think that friendship is only a functional, sterile reflex to being given food.

There has to be something broken and deeply shut down for them not to be able to sense the other animal's caring emotional responses to the person they have befriended.

But, if you go through life seeing other animals as dumb, mindless objects, that might be the problem. 😒

timberwraith, 3 months ago to random

I live in a country where 1.5 thousand people die every week from deaths that might be prevented if we had a rational response to the pandemic.

Because white conservative america was offended over the inconvenience of wearing a mask and getting a vaccine, and corporate america valued its cash flow more than human lives, 1.5K die weekly.

Instead, the country has taken away women's and trans people's medical care because this also upsets white conservative america and their political lapdogs.

timberwraith, 3 months ago to random

I'm all for ripping the machinery of capitalism out by the roots and tossing it into the void.

However, it was built upon and bolted into systems of exploitation, violence, and social hierarchy that preceded it.

You will STILL have to deal with dismantling those systems even if capitalism goes away.

timberwraith, 1 month ago to random

What I learned from watching TERFs descend into right wing fuckery as the decades passed, is this:

If your opposition to oppression remains limited to the one particular oppression that effects you personally, and you see the efforts of other oppressed people as offensive, nonsensical, and/or inconvenient to you...

Chances are, you're going to go full fascist at some point further down the road.

timberwraith, 1 month ago to random

FYI, denoting the word "Christian" as a default label for a good person, even if it's meant as a complement to a non-christian, essentially reproduces cultural assumptions of christian supremacy.

So saying a christian is behaving like an atheist when they turn away from others in need and saying an atheist is behaving like a christian when they help others in need is not great.

Would you say this about a person who is Muslim or Jewish? They'd be annoyed for very good reasons.

Don't do this.

timberwraith, 4 months ago to random

So, after I posted a discussion of how being trans leads to cis people dismissing one's opinions and perspectives, I had a cis person come into my mentions to dismiss my observation.

Is the universe fucking with me? Is it giggling at me right now? 🤷‍♀️

timberwraith, 13 days ago to random

I think one of the things that separates liberals from the left is that liberals, to a fair extent, adhere to the "great man" theory of power and wealth, in which people believe that many of the people in political power or who have wealth wound up in that place because they are people of great skill and talent.

On the left, people tend to adhere to the "great bastard" theory of power and wealth, in which one has to be a rotten, abusive person to wind up with political power or wealth.

timberwraith, 6 months ago to random

I would gladly spend the rest of my life as a happy cat lady than marry a Trump voting douchebag and become an unhappy divorcee with a nazi-loving abusive asswipe as my ex.

Why the hell would WaPo even suggest such a thing?

It's nice to see they're reverting back to the toilet paper I knew so well when I lived in the DC area.

Good grief.

timberwraith, 1 month ago to random

I will also say this, in direct relation to the belief that trans kids can't possibly decide to take any kind of trans/gender affirming changes in their life before some illusory age of "maturity" (be it 18, 25, 50, ∞, or whatever) passes:

I knew with a strong intensity, who I was by my tweens. I knew I was somehow different when I was only 5.

It was only the gaslighting and brainwashing of peers, family, and larger culture which served to dissuade me from that understanding of self.

timberwraith, 3 months ago to random

I was around the online spaces of New Atheism from about 2010 to its decline. It reminded me so much of a high school boy's locker room.

The subculture was permeated with "my intellect is bigger than your intellect" male ego stroking. Most of the exchanges consisted of verbal battles that were basically adolescent male insult matches with a thin veneer of intellectualism slathered on top.

It was a community rife with toxic masculinity that ran on a discourse dominated by white men.

timberwraith, 1 month ago to random

For those folks who think the violent, bigoted white people who live in rural spaces are the "real americans," I think they're right but not in the way they intend.

The u.s. was built upon the collective criminal thuggery of violent bigoted Europeans who killed the people who lived in North America, stole their land, and forced another group of people to labor for them at gun point.

I think rural white america represents those real americans of the past quite well.

https://newrepublic.com/article/180570/trump-rural-white-resentment-honest-assessment